46 NATURAL SCIENCE. January. 1897. 



Chapter IX., headed " The Energy of Evolution," appears to be 

 devoted rather to a recapitulation of the theory of bathmism, to the 

 explanation of heredity as the transmission of a mode of motion, not 

 the transmission of matter, and to the airing of those numerous 

 neologisms in which the New World delights — Antichemism, 

 Emphytism, Statogenesis, Autokinetogenesis, Cryptonoy, and the 

 like. It is Chapter X. that tells us what, in Professor Cope's opinion, 

 •does form the energy of evolution. " It maintains that consciousness 

 as well as life preceded organism, and has been the pyimutn mobile in 

 the creation of organic structure. . . . The true definition of life is, 

 .energy directed by sensibility, or by a mechanism which has originated under the 

 .direction of sensibility." To enter upon the discussion of such important 

 theses would require not a paragraph, not an article, but a book. It 

 is the less necessary since the views of Professor Cope have recently 

 been fully criticised by professed philosophers and psychologists (see 

 Natural Science, ix., p. 220). 



Chapter XL, and last, contains a list of papers by American 

 authors that have contributed to the evidence used in the book, and 

 summarises in their own words the positions assumed by Ryder, 

 Hyatt, Packard, Osborn, Dall, W. B. Scott, Eimer, and Naegeli, 

 Whatever our own opinions may be on particular questions, we must 

 admit that this chapter, and indeed the whole book, forms a useful 

 guide to the views of the American school of biologists, and especially 

 to those of its chief prophet, Professor Cope. At the same time we 

 must remember that not all eminent biologists in America are Neo- 

 Lamarckians, any more than all in England are Neo-Darwinians. In 

 biology, as in other sciences, there is still plenty of room for that 

 diversity of opinion without which knowledge cannot be advanced. 



F. A. Bather. 



